Where the Streets Have No Name
by Macalaure
Summary: Beyond the veil, Harry Potter finds a realm not bound by the laws of reality. There he confronts an apparition more beautiful and more terrible than any he has encountered before: a land of impossibility with the potential to save or break him. Warning: this is completely AU, not at all canon, and takes some creative liberties about what exactly the veil is and how prophecies work.


**Title:** Where the Streets Have No Name  
**Author:** Macalaure  
**Canon:** Harry Potter  
**Summary:** Beyond the veil, Harry Potter finds a realm not bound by the laws of reality. There he confronts an apparition more beautiful and more terrible than any he has encountered before, a land of impossibility with the potential to save or break him. Warning: this is completely AU, not at all canon, and takes some creative liberties about what exactly the veil is and how prophecies work.  
**Chapters:** 1  
**Rating:** K+  
**Dedicated:** Kyanite Eirian, for patience and perseverance, and for dreaming dreams as incoherent as these.

_All characters, places and everything else recognizable from the canon belongs to JK Rowling. The plot is speculation and my own. The title is taken from the U2 song about breaking free from the bonds that confine us—real or imagined._

* * *

_I want to run, I want to hide  
I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside  
I want to reach out, and touch the flame  
Where the streets have no name_

HARRY JAMES POTTER glided down the long corridor illuminated by the light of a long-forgotten dream. His padded footsteps fell in whispers over the cold stone walkway beneath him, and his mind lurched. He reached out for the door he knew would be right before him, but the curiosity that had once taken control of him had departed, and he was left with only a bottomless feeling of emptiness.

He pushed the door open slowly and found himself standing in the Hall of Prophecies, preserved exactly as he remembered it. Instinctively, he followed the long hall until he found himself standing before row 97. He turned without hesitation and walked down the row to where a single shimmering orb was missing from its stand.

Harry tried to remember why he was here—or for that matter, how he had found his way into the Ministry of Magic in the middle of the night—but his only memories were of the hall and now this room which had plagued his dreams so much throughout his fifth year at Hogwarts.

He looked again at the empty stand and he thought he heard whispering. Excited, he leaned in to listen, but now it seemed the voices were fading away. Some innate, primal fear took hold of him, and he sprang to his feet and followed their sound lest he lose their source. He followed the dim voices through the maze of shelves and prophecies. They always remained far enough ahead of him so that he couldn't hear what they spoke of, but never far enough that he lost them or their direction.

Finally, Harry found himself in front of another familiar door. He pulled it open and stepped into a circular room with a raised dais. In the middle of the room was a massive stone arch whose passage was obscured by a thick veil. Harry felt a stab of pain in his heart, and for a wretched, transitory moment, he could see Sirius disappear through the veil, as clear and terrible as the first time it had happened.

Now he understood, the voices were coming from beyond the arch. What was it that Luna had told him the last day of term? They were just lurking out of sight, that's all. You heard them.

Harry walked forward slowly, keeping his eyes on the veil and listening, trying to make sense of the strange words that echoed around him. He closed his eyes and was frightened by his inherent capacity to understand; they were welcoming him, beckoning him through the veil.

Harry froze for a moment. He had seen Sirius disappear through the veil and never return. Would he share the same fate if he passed through?

He took a deep breath, reaching for his wand in his back pocket as he stepped through the archway. His hand touched the cool fabric and for a moment it seemed corporeal, but then his hand passed through it like water. It wasn't until he had crossed the threshold that his hand reached the bottom of his jeans pocket, coming up empty. Then he was through, into the land beyond the veil. . . .

As he emerged from the archway, he could feel the shift from real to ethereal, from conscious to subconscious, from reality to impossibility. There was no accompanying jolt, but it was rather like switching lenses on a telescope. Suddenly, disjointed scenes flashed before him in his mind's eye. He couldn't tell if his body was standing in still in the middle of the underground chamber beneath the stone arch, or whether it was not at King's Cross Station.

He blinked and the mirage took over. A scarlet and black engine pulled into the station, billowing dark smoke from its bowels. With a shrill whistle it announced its arrival and Harry could see a family of two saying their goodbyes. The eleven-year-old child looked up into the smiling face of his single parent. He was a tall man, with a devilishly handsome face, and long dark hair. The child gave him a swift hug, and the father pressed the whiskers on his chin against the top of the boy's head before releasing him and watching him scamper off towards the nearest car.

As the child passed Harry, he paused to throw a curious glance in his direction. Their eyes met and Harry's gaze passed upwards, over the wire-bound circular glasses, past the messy, jet-black hair that didn't seem to lay down in place, and came to rest on his forehead, which was smooth as the skin of a baby. With one last strange look, the boy turned tail and ran onto the train just before it pulled out of the station. The child's father waved at the train as it pulled out of the station. When it rounded the corner and passed out of sight, the man finally turned around and Harry caught his eye from afar. His dark hair fell in curtains around his face, which looked strangely dog-like in the setting sun. . . .

The train station dissolved into mist and now he was in the darkened halls of the Burrow. The room was brilliantly lit and burned with the cheerful light of tiny, floating candles. He stood in the kitchen, among a large crowd of people who seemed to be waiting for something. He watched the door handle turn and everyone in the room draw a collective breath.

A young man pressed open the door and stepped over the threshold. He saw a host of people waiting for him with outstretched arms. At the front of the crowd was a familiar, handsome man. His gray eyes glittered with a youth Harry had never known him to possess save from the pictures taken in the company of his father. He held a bottle of butterbeer in one hand and a wrapped present that Harry somehow knew contained a beautiful gold watch. . . .

Now the walls of the burrow melted away and Harry stood in the middle of a snowy graveyard. He shivered on reflex, but after a moment he realized he couldn't feel the cold. Headstones dotted his vision, the graveyard seemed to stretch for miles in every direction; everywhere he looked was a reminder of death.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps and the crunch of snow as two figures emerged through falling flakes. Harry retreated into the shadows of a headstone and watched as the two people approached. The taller man had a hand on the shoulder of the younger, who was clearly shaking, though due to the cold, or for some other reason, Harry could not tell.

The two looked around, but they did not appear to know where they were going. Then, the taller man spotted something and pointed out a marble headstone planted firmly in the frozen ground. The two made their way towards it and stood still before it as the snow piled around them in heaps. One of the men conjured an elegant wreath and placed it at the foot of the headstone. The snow fell all around like a barrage of frozen tears. . . .

Harry's vision was obscured by white and suddenly, he stood in an old church. Light streamed through glorious stained glass and shone a rainbow of color on the lines of pews. The congregation gathered in the sacred building was small and Harry had a seat near the front of the church. A tall man dressed in elegant dress robes stood near the altar. A short wiry priest stood at his side, and between them stood the best man, tall and handsome as ever, grinning a wide grin that showed his straight teeth.

The doors began to open and the crowd rose in anticipation. For a moment all Harry could see was white and then the shapeless mass transformed into a beautiful figure gliding down the aisle. She mounted the steps to the altar and stood straight and tall next to the groom. From his angle, Harry couldn't see the bride's face, but his heart leapt into his throat when he saw the strand of brilliant red hair peeking out from underneath the white veil. . . .

The church was lost in a blur and Harry now stood before the entrance to a strange room. Nervous apprehension played across his mind and the cold touch of the handle shot a thrill through his body. He pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold.

A host of smiling faces awaited him on the other side. On the right was the tall, slender figure of Albus Dumbledore, dressed in resplendent purple robes, the smile on his face and the twinkle in his eyes made Harry's heart ache; to his right was Mad-Eye, one hand on his gnarled cane, and the other on his hip flask, bobbing his head incessantly to a tune only he could hear; next to him stood Lupin and Tonks, holding hands and smiling widely at him, the rings on their fingers gleaming in the bright light; then there were Fred and Colin, wild grins on both of their faces, eyes aglow with a familiar light; on the far right were his parents, smiling and waving with the inherent beauty and warmth he remember from every picture he had ever seen of them; and standing at the center of the group was his godfather, arms spread wide and eyes shining. He stepped away from the group and towards his godson, embracing him with a warmth Harry had seldom seen on his living face.

The room melted away around them and now they were in the middle of a London street and Sirius was striding on ahead. Harry rushed to catch up, confused as his eyes ran over the unfamiliar buildings.

"Where are we going?" he called to the figure before him.

Sirius offered scarcely a turn of his head as he answered simply, "Home," before turning back to the road.

But now, as Harry looked around, he gained a sense of recognition. The tightly packed houses prodded memories of dark halls and drafty corridors, and as he came to a stop between Numbers 11 and 13, Harry understood.

The houses on either side of Number 12 Grimmauld Place swayed and moaned as his godfather's ancestral home pushed and shoved its way into existence. Sirius stepped onto the foyer and with a single knock, the heavy door swung open. Then he turned around for the first time, beckoning Harry inside.

As Harry crossed the threshold of the house, he was thrown momentarily into confusion. Expecting darkly lit halls and ominous pictures lining the walls, he was surprised when he was greeted by a warm light that permeated the corridor leading to the kitchen. He followed Sirius down the corridor, gazing hungrily at the pictures on the wall. One showed Sirius, Lupin, and his parents, smiling and waving at the camera. Emotion filled him to the brim with warmth and he did not want to look away for fear that their love would leave him.

He tore his gaze away from the photographs with an ache in his heart and entered the kitchen in Sirius' wake. His godfather was already sitting at the table pouring a tankard of whiskey into two tall glasses. Harry sat down opposite him and caught the glass as it was slid towards him. He drained it in one go, not feeling the familiar burning sensation that usually accompanied the drink's consumption.

Finally, Harry looked up and into the face of his godfather. His eyes were still shining, but his expression had changed to one of empathy, shared suffering. Harry was too confused to avoid being blunt so he made no effort not to.

"Who are you?"

The question brought back Sirius' smile, but it was a sad smile that only turned up the corners of his lips. "I am Sirius Black," he said slowly, "A fugitive, convicted of murder in the first degree, sentenced to life in Azkaban, and killed at the hand of my own dear cousin."

Harry looked around and his mind recalled all the visions he had been put through. "Not here, you're not."

Sirius nodded. "There are a lot of things in your world that I am and lots of things that I'm not. Here, the things that I'm not in your world, are what I am."

Harry did not even bother trying to unpack that sentence and simply glared in frustration at Sirius. This brought a chuckle to his godfather's lips. "You remind me so much of James sometimes," he said, and Harry could see the moisture lining his eyes.

"Explain."

Sirius smiled, a genuine one this time. "I'll do my best." He settled back in his chair, drained his cup of whiskey, and poured himself another.

"When you declare something true, you are also declaring everything contrary to that false," Sirius began, pausing to see if Harry was following. Feeling as though this required some acknowledgement from him, Harry nodded, and Sirius continued. "That is also the fundamental principle of reality. Until the point in time at which an event with two or more possible outcomes happens, there is a sense of uncertainty as to which path reality will take. Once this event takes place and the path becomes clear, that path becomes reality, and the other paths become impossibilities, dead-end remnants of a reality that could have been."

"The entire magical field of Divination grew out of trying to predict which of these paths will be most likely to occur. Divination is the most imprecise form of magic because we know so little about how reality and impossibility work. What little we have learned from it has been gleaned from research done in the Department of Mysteries."

Harry nodded again as Sirius paused. To him, it seemed as though his godfather was taking an awfully long and roundabout way to get to the point..

"So whenever a seer makes a legitimate prophecy, such as the one Professor Trelawney made so many years ago, the passage of events takes a predetermined course. The moment that old bat delivered that prophecy, she declared everything else contrary to that reality impossible. The reason I'm explaining all this is because it begs the question: where do the impossibilities go?"

"Sorry?"

Sirius leaned back and frowned, hand tapping absentmindedly on the flat of his glass. "Well, you've got these branches in time, one of them becomes a reality whether it's predetermined or not. That reality takes root in your world, and ends up defining how events unfold there. Which, as I said, begs the question—"

Harry opened his eyes wide as he struggled under the weight of the epiphany. "That's what this place is?"

Sirius nodded. "That's right, this is the land beyond the veil, the realm of impossibility, a place not governed by the laws of reality, a place where the streets have no name."

Harry struggled to keep up as his mind seemed to lag painfully behind. "So all this," he asked slowly, "All this is inside the arch, behind the veil?"

His godfather laughed as he spotted the source of Harry's confusion. "No," he said, shaking his head, "We are in a completely different realm."

"Like another world?" Harry asked.

"Think bigger. Some people would call this an alternate universe. The arch and the veil are just the place where they connect, a doorway if you will."

Harry's mind struggled to comprehend this. He glanced around, looking intently at the walls as if to see if they were indeed corporeal.

Sirius grinned at him. "Oh they're quite real, depending on how you define real of course—they've never existed in reality, so to speak. Just the fact that a place like this exists seems to skew our definition of the word quite a bit. But I assure you, this place is as real as I am." Harry felt a hand touch his outstretched arm. There was no feeling of tingling cold or etherealness about it, it was warm and perfectly solid.

So this is what Thomas must have felt like, Harry mused to himself. But now he frowned as a new thought rose in his mind. He glanced up imploringly at Sirius. "Well, all this is fine, but why am I here? I have no memory of walking into the Department of Mysteries, or the Ministry of Magic at all for that matter."

Harry felt the hand return to his arm and something stopped him from looking up. "Well that's the easiest question you've asked all night. You're here because I brought you here."

Once again, Harry was set off guard. He frowned as he asked, "You brought me here? I thought this was a separate realm from reality."

Sirius nodded again. "That's true, but there are connection points. The archway is a physical one, but there are other, more common connections."

Once again, Harry started as he realized he knew the answer before Sirius said it. "Dreams," he whispered.

"That's right," Sirius said, apparently impressed.

"So I'm sleeping now?" Harry asked.

"Well, your body is at least."

Harry frowned. "You never answered my question. Who are you?"

"I had forgotten how clever you were, Harry. Very little escapes your notice. Very well, half of what I told you was true. I am Sirius Black, however I was never convicted of murder, imprisoned in Azkaban, nor killed by Bellatrix Lestrange."

And Harry understood. "You're an impossibility; the Sirius that would have existed if Voldemort never had."

As these thoughts bounced around Harry's head, a particularly venomous one rose to the forefront, and its conclusion was so glaringly obvious, Harry was amazed and angered he had not noticed it before.

"So you brought me here to torture me?" His voice rose with every word and his clenched fists pounded on the wooden table. He felt the dull throbbing pain this caused and it grounded him in a sense of reality. "You brought me here, showed me all these visions of my life as it could have been if Voldemort had never murdered your or my parents. What good does that do me?Are you just trying to fuck with me? Are you trying to reinforce the fact that life takes away everyone in the world that loves me?" The hurt and betrayal Harry felt was overwhelming. He had to believe that this apparition, this impossibility, was so drastically different from the real Sirius. He could not stand to suffer this kind of betrayal from his closest confidant and dearest friend.

The rage built slowly in him as it seemed as though Sirius would not answer him. His godfather had drained a second glass of whiskey and was pouring himself a third. When he finally looked up, Harry saw the tear tracks down his cheeks and was momentarily taken aback. Sirius must have seen his face, for he smiled, refilling Harry's glass for him and sliding it back across the short distance between them.

"I suppose I do owe you an explanation. Yes, I brought you here, and yes, I've shown you scenes of impossibility, something that is by definition, divorced from and devoid of reality. But now let me ask you a question: what has your life been like in reality?"

Harry closed his eyes and the walls of Grimmauld Place melted around him once more. He saw the scene in the train station once more, but the tall handsome parent was gone, and in his place was a short plump woman surrounded by four red-haired boys and one young girl. The party at the Burrow flashed before his eyes, and the same woman was holding out a box that contained a battered gold watch that had once belonged to Fabian Prewett. Now he was walking through the snowy graveyard, where the younger man walked the path accompanied by a girl. They were joined at the hand, at the hip, and at the heart, as the girl conjured the wreath and placed it on the grave. Finally, he saw the wedding, and the tall, handsome best man was replaced with a tall, gangly, grinning figure, with locks of long red hair.

Harry came to suddenly in the brightly lit hall of Number 12 Grimmauld Place and gazed into his godfather's eyes. They were shining, not with tears, but with love; the love of all the people—dead and alive, real and impossible—that were forever in linked to his heart, and suddenly Harry was overcome with emotion. Hot tears streamed down his face and he raised his eyes to the heavens. The roof melted away and he was looking into the ceiling of the Great Hall, dotted with a thousand twinkling stars. From somewhere at his side, he could hear Sirius' voice.

"Harry, I want to show you one more thing." He put a hand on his godson's shoulder and Harry closed his eyes. Now he was in the graveyard once more. But now the body being interred was that of his godfather. Harry could see himself, Hermione on his right and Ron on his left, dressed in black robes. He saw the tears that fell down his own cheeks mirrored the ones on the three figures seated before the tomb.

Harry opened his eyes and stared into the night sky. "Harry," Sirius said softly, "Tell me the truth, would you have mourned me any less had I died on my own bed with you and your mother and father and your wife and children at my side?" Harry shook his head; his cheeks were wet and his shoulders were shaking beneath Sirius' steady hand. He looked up at his godfather once more, and was amazed to see a look of pure, radiant joy. Sirius spoke, and it seemed his voice was getting more and more distant.

"You are loved, Harry. Don't ever believe any differently."

Now he was walking once more, but along a crooked road in the countryside beneath the same starry sky. Anticipation and adrenaline drove him faster and faster and his arms pumped up and down as he broke into a full sprint.

He ran and the soles of his feet dug into the hard ground. He did not care if he left behind everything he knew because he was running towards the only thing that mattered.

Before him loomed the towering form of the Burrow. It was twilight, but the windows were lit and laughter and music drifted in on lazy winds from inside; they were sweet infectious and he felt a yearning deep within his soul. Two figures stood waving on the doorstep, a tall boy and a pretty girl, laughing quietly to each other. In a high window Harry could see others, a tall thin man, a short plump woman, and a young girl.

He ran forward, leaping over a stream without breaking stride. His arms were outstretched as his heart leapt in his chest. He was filled with a beautiful joy, the same joy he felt when he first learned that his parents were wizards, and when he understood that Sirius Black was not his parents' murderer, but his godfather, and when he stood on the edge of the Hogwarts grounds hand-in-hand with Ron and Hermione after Voldemort's fall. He rushed into the arms of the two figures on the doorstep and he knew the others would arrive soon. It didn't matter; he was loved. From far away, he thought he could hear Sirius' gentle laughter. . . .

In another realm, across a vast expanse, a distance immeasurable by space or time, the sleeping form of Harry James Potter smiled.


End file.
